Before starting game after purchasing Crusade DLC today, I verified game files, disabled mods in-game, and then deleted all previously installed mods in the mods folder. Then, game launched fine, and I started using the Civilization Designer. I noticed that extra backgrounds, leader Pictures, logos and such from priorly installed mods (found at Nexusmods.com ) were still there, so I started using them. Suddenly, after about an hour where everything worked fine, almost all backgrounds, leader Pictures and logos (even the Vanilla ones from the basegame) disappeared.

I quit game, and moved the mods containing these Pictures, backgrounds and logos back to the mods folder, and then the problems began. Game hung and crashed on launch. Now, I have verified game files two times, but this did not fix the problem, and the game continues to crash on launch. I will try to delete the game and install it again later, but wanted to inform about this mess (mostly self-inflicted, I suppose) nonetheless, and if anyone has suggestions or help, I am happy to get it, since at the moment, my favourite game is unplayable... And the long-awaited Crusade expansion is dead for me at the moment...

-While playing as the Terran Resistance, the extreme colonization unlock appeared twice: once in the actual Extreme Colonization tech and once in the immediate preceding tech, which grants access to colonial hospitals. The research time for this second tech showed to be 38 turns because of this. I have not checked this for the other races.

-For the racial attributes (clever, productive, etc.) the ones that had their positive levels/versions/options reduced to 5% and 10% (from 10% and 20% respectively) still retained the negative options of 15% and 30% respectively. I do not think this disparity was intended.

Can't use custom races in multiplayer either. If that was, perhaps for a short time, supposed to be intentional, would have been nice for a heads up about it as playing custom races in multiplayer is kinda important for a game like this.

Not a bug. I made them remove it because people (ahem, like me) who have custom civs with lots of different unique ships cause over a minute of sync time as the data has to be transmitted to every single player.

We're trying to come up with a different solution. I'd love to hear some ideas on this. Essentially, syncing all those ships and other assets with other people via steamworks (which caps at 1megabit -- 125 kilobytes per second) is killing us.

Not a bug. I made them remove it because people (ahem, like me) who have custom civs with lots of different unique ships cause over a minute of sync time as the data has to be transmitted to every single player.

We're trying to come up with a different solution. I'd love to hear some ideas on this. Essentially, syncing all those ships and other assets with other people via steamworks (which caps at 1megabit -- 125 kilobytes per second) is killing us.

So the issue is because of players that potentially have lots of unique ships? I don't see how that justifies removing the feature for people who don't have as many uniquely made ships, and even then, is the sync a one time deal at game creation or is it happening frequently like every turn? If it's the former, again, I don't see how that justifies removing the feature as having a wait time in the lobby isn't terrible for a game that potentially could go on for hours. At that point it remains an annoying but not a game breaking bug and will hopefully be fixed in time. I may be in the minority demographic, but to express my concern over the matter, I primarily play this game with friends with our custom races, and honestly if waiting a little longer for the game to start because of sync issues, or playing with less user made ships means that we could play together then it would be worth it.

Try re-validating the local game file until you receive no errors if you haven't tried that yet. My friend and I found there were some missing files and we had to validate multiple times until they cleared. It might be responsible for your issue.

Not sure what is going on with the rush fees. There is no rhyme or reason to the amounts. They might be $500 for a factory rush on one colony and $1500 on another, and if it'sw $1500 for one improvement it is the same for all even if they have only a couple of turns left.

Not a bug. I made them remove it because people (ahem, like me) who have custom civs with lots of different unique ships cause over a minute of sync time as the data has to be transmitted to every single player.

We're trying to come up with a different solution. I'd love to hear some ideas on this. Essentially, syncing all those ships and other assets with other people via steamworks (which caps at 1megabit -- 125 kilobytes per second) is killing us.

Are they not cached for other players? Either way, it should kind of be the players prerogative if they want to play a multiplayer match under such conditions or not. This isn't an arena style game where players just tend to jump into random lobbies with random strangers for an unplanned game. That is a HUGE feature to cut. It should at the very least be an option the host can enable or disable... And honestly, I'd rather have the option to implement a custom ship cap than lose custom races.

Would it not be possible to replace the custom ship appearnace with a generic one for the player who doesn't have the custom civ? (So, the only one who sees the custom-looking ship is the 'owner', with everyone else just seeing a generic-looking ship which has all the same abilities, properties and attributes of the custom ship)?

I'm surprised that wouldn't already be the case, after what happened with the many penis-monsters in Spore!

For example Treasure Hunt has a construction cost of 250. My Sponsor Manufacturing is 26.7. The Buildable Ships list in the shipyard says it will take 15 turns to complete. In the Manufacturing Queue it shows the right value of 10 turns.